Word: teller
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Project Sherwood, the secret U.S. program to achieve controlled thermonuclear (atomic fusion) power, came ever so slightly into the open last week. After attending a secret conference of 350 Sherwood men at Gatlinburg, Tenn., Dr. Edward Teller, leading authority on thermonuclear processes, delivered a complicated paper before an unclassified meeting of the American Nuclear Society at Chicago...
...Teller's speech did not give the present status of U.S. thermonuclear research, but it did give a great deal of background, new to most outsiders, about the path (or one of the paths) that Project Sherwood is following...
Small Star. In the stars, said Teller, thermonuclear reactions are possible because the great mass of the star provides a gravitational field that holds the reacting gases together, even though their temperature may be very high. Human scientists have better nuclear fuel than the stars have, but they cannot hold their gases together gravitationally. No material container can do the trick, either; its walls would be melted instantly if they came in contact with reacting gases at the necessary high temperature...
...create a "small star" that reacts at enormous temperature without touching anything material is to confine the gases in a "magnetic bottle." Teller explained that the gases would be completely ionized by the heat. All the particles in them would have electric charges, and would be strongly influenced by a magnetic field. If the field could be made strong enough, the particles would spiral tightly in it, keeping away from vulnerable walls of the material container...
Tricky Balance. Leakproof magnetic bottles, Physicist Teller pointed out, are not easy to construct. The magnetism must be just strong enough to confine the ionized gases at the right density and temperature, and keep them confined long enough for a reaction to take place. The reaction would release energy and raise the temperature, so the magnetic field must grow stronger when necessary to keep things in balance. Power must be drawn out of the system without disturbing its tricky balance...